Senior bureaucrat Kathryn Campbell is the first to pay the price over the unlawful Robodebt scheme, two weeks after the Robodebt royal commission handed down its damning findings.
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00:00 Well, Catherine Campbell, who oversaw the rollout of the unlawful Robodebt scheme, has
00:06 been suspended from her $900,000 a year defence job.
00:10 Now she was the former head of the Department of Human Services during Robodebt's inception
00:15 back in 2014.
00:16 She also then led the Department of Social Services between 2017 and 2021.
00:23 As you said, she's the first senior person to pay a price after those damning findings
00:28 were handed down.
00:29 The report was very scathing in its criticism of Ms Campbell's handling of the scheme.
00:34 It said that she'd been responsible for a department that had established, implemented
00:38 and maintained an unlawful program.
00:41 It found that she did nothing of substance when exposed to information that revealed
00:46 the illegality of the program and that she gave misleading advice to Federal Cabinet
00:51 about the policy proposal.
00:53 The commission also found that she'd instructed staff to cease processing a request for legal
00:58 advice sought by the Ombudsman because she was motivated by a concern that the unlawfulness
01:04 of the scheme might be exposed during their investigations.
01:08 It said that she did nothing because she knew that Scott Morrison wanted to pursue the proposal
01:14 and that the government could not achieve the savings that it had promised without that
01:18 program.
01:19 Now, Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister, was asked on ABC Sydney this morning to confirm
01:24 the news.
01:25 He did confirm it.
01:27 He said that failings with bureaucracy and human tragedy caused by the scheme meant that
01:32 action needed to be taken.
01:33 [BLANK_AUDIO]